Dispatches from California Institute of Integral Studies.

Faculty

December 10, 2012

By LELAND VAN DEN DAELE, PhD, ABPP, professor in the Clinical Psychology Department at CIIS. Leland is a Life Member of the American Psychological Association, a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, and Research Director of Psychodiagnostics. He publishes his own blog.

Since its inception, the CIIS Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program was inspired by the philosophical and psychological writings of Alan Watts and Haridas Chadhuri. Watts was the Dean of the Institute for Asian Studies, the progenitor of CIIS, and Chadhuri was the first president of CIIS. Both Watts and Chadhuri emphasized that psychological health depended upon the whole person: body, mind, and spirit.

The interdependence of body, mind, and spirit find validation in contemporary science. Biochemistry and clinical nutrition have demonstrated numerous links among diet, neurotransmitters, mood, and behavior. Wide-ranging cognitive and behavioral effects have been established for exercise and sleep. The scientific study of practices associated with yoga, tai chi, and Buddhism have entered the main stream. As a rule, results validate traditional wisdom as a foundation for equanimity, and physical and mental health.

Cognitive neuroscience employing electroencephalograph (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies further provide a window into the inner world. If changes in the brain and the mind are interdependent, as is widely taken as axiomatic, then changes in EEG and MRI patterns reflect changes in mental activity. The use of these technologies demonstrates the pervasive influence of unconscious factors on attention, awareness, and cognition. Subtle emotion, the material and social context, abstract purpose, belief, personal history, and a host of other variables individually and collectively influence the flow of consciousness, cognition, and choice. Consciousness, cognition, and choice arise in a multidimensional field. Multiple strata from the biochemical and cellular to the energetic level participate to form conscious content.

A different approach is embodied in reductive approaches to psychology, which attempt to isolate a single factor that influences mind and behavior. The statistical method associated with reductive approaches requires the observer to “sum across” individuals. The method necessarily focuses upon one or a few variables isolated from the totality of an individual’s life. Indeed, the individual ceases to exist, replaced by numbers on a scale, which define only a “variable” on a scale and not the individual in her complexity.

As a result, symptom-oriented treatments typically employ a protocol, a kind of “one-size-fits-all” set of exercises or formulations, meant to apply to persons described by the protocol. Reductive approaches fail to address the person or provide individualized understanding how she finds herself in her current life situation. Instead, the person is given a formula.

This contrasts with CIIS’s integrative psychodynamic approach to clinical psychology. Body, mind, and spirit are viewed in dynamic relationship. Symptoms are not isolated from the whole human being and her social and emotional context. CIIS’s integrative psychodynamic approach aims at positive psychological health, not just the elimination of this or that symptom.

Integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy entails growth of experience, knowledge, and insight into the multidimensional nature of self, other, and world. The approach does not entail “quick fixes” or formula. It recognizes the complexity of individual differences, human relations, and life. The successful application of integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy eventuates in new openness to the inner and outer world. The positive psychological health that results is more than the absence of symptoms. It entails heightened empathy, sensitivity, and maturity. As integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy opens experience of the self, it opens experience to life.

December 04, 2012

By KAISA PUHAKKA, professor in the Clinical
Psychology Department at CIIS

Recent
decades have seen a fertile encounter between Buddhism and Western psychology.
Unique among religious and spiritual traditions, Buddhism does not have a
theology or beliefs of any kind as its foundation. In its 2,500 year history it has taken root
in many countries and possessed an amazing capacity to adapt to rather than
oppose the cultural mores and beliefs of its host countries. But none of these
mores or beliefs is essential to Buddhism. For example, many but not all
Buddhists accept re-incarnation, karma, etc., which were prevalent beliefs in
the early host countries. As much as we know of the historical Buddha, he
counseled his disciples to not take any teachings on faith—not even his—but to
verify their truth in direct personal experience and observation. It is this
insistence on verification in direct observation, along with the concern with
alleviation of suffering, that naturally aligns Buddhism with Western
psychotherapy. Cognitive-behavioral
psychotherapy has indeed taken advantage of this alignment in widespread and
successful adaptations of mindfulness meditation for managing stress, chronic
pain, anxiety and depression.

But
there is so much more to Buddhism than these simple adaptations. Buddhism has
big ideas that reach through your innermost self all the way through the vast
cosmos —like pratityasmutpada or the interdependence of all beings, or sunyata,
the no-thingness or voidness of reality. And they are not just ideas but
something to be realized in the immediacy of one's experience. I once asked a
famous mathematician at a Zen monastery about the secret of his apparently
inexhaustible creativity (he was 50 then). He said, “It's about being closest to
my true self. You know, of course, my self is nothing at all,” he smiled and
described how when sitting in the Zendo, mathematical forms spontaneously arise
out of the void (sunyata). He had been sitting through sesshins
for 24 years when I came to my first. Something coming from nothing—true
creativity!

No
Western psychology is big enough to fully contain these ideas, but we have
bigger containers that could do more than symptom-focused cognitive-behavioral
psychology—like psychodynamic psychotherapy, which considers the whole person
and all of the psyche including the unconscious. It is indeed heartening to see
the door being slowly cracked open in contemporary psychoanalytic circles not
only for meditative techniques but for deeper inquiry into the self. Like Buddhism, psychodynamic psychotherapy is
concerned with alleviating suffering and also believes in disciplined
self-inquiry and dispelling of illusions as key to liberation from suffering.
In both, the inquiry is carried out in a formal relationship—between student
and teacher in many forms of Buddhist practice and between patient and
therapist in psychodynamic psychotherapy. There is enough common ground between
the two traditions to meaningfully explore some of the vast differences that
are there also. I believe it is in the dynamic tension of these differences
that new discoveries and developments will take place, both for the grounding
of Buddhist practice in Western cultural soil, and for awakening the spiritual
soul of psychodynamic therapy.

November 26, 2012

By KAISA PUHAKKA, professor in the Clinical Psychology Department at CIIS

Psychodynamic practice is making a comeback thanks to a recent surge in empirical research supporting it (see for example Jonathan Shedler's 2010 article in APA's The American Psychologist). But far-reaching developments in the field have been quietly happening long before they caught the public eye.

Psychodynamic therapy today is indeed very different from what it was in Freud's time. In a forthcoming book, "That Was Then, This is Now: An Introduction to Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy," Shedler details recent changes in the field. To me the most fascinating developments are the active presence of the “unconscious” and the shift from authoritarian delivery of interpretations by therapist to patient to a more collaborative work between the two as practiced in contemporary relational psychodynamic approaches. These developments open a meeting ground for psychodynamic and other holistic approaches such as existential and phenomenological psychotherapies, which rejected the Freudian theory of the unconscious. They also open the door for exchanges with spiritual traditions such as Buddhism and its sophisticated meditative techniques for deepening access to the unconscious.

Now what is it that psychodynamic therapists do? Freud used to call ours an “impossible profession,” and certainly it is impossible to answer this question briefly. Just for starters, they do a lot of deep listening, which is an extraordinary skill that's being honed throughout the training of psychodynamic therapists and usually keeps developing in depth and refinement even after formal training. It takes more than the ordinary ear to listen deeply, which is why Theodore Reik long ago named it “listening with the third ear.” Deep listening tunes not just into what the person knows about themselves but also what they don't know and perhaps don't want to know about themselves. The latter especially is important because very likely nobody ever listened to it before. It may be communicated by words not intended, by gestures and body language, and by something even more subtle and difficult to name that therapists sense to the extent that they are open to sensing it.

This takes me back to the importance of training and cultivation of the extraordinary skill of listening. For this skill to deepen, the therapists in training need to turn their “third ear” toward their own interior to learn to sense in the moment what otherwise would pass unnoticed in their response to the patient. In contemporary psychodynamic therapy, the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious is permeable, and some of what happens in the process between therapist and patient is communicated directly without conscious verbal mediation. Buddhist meditative practices, such as mindfulness-based stress-reduction, have been adapted as simple techniques for the benefit of patients in mainstream symptom reduction approaches. In psychodynamic therapy, it is first and foremost the therapists who benefit from Buddhist meditation in deepening their attunement to their own as well as the patient's interior processes.

October 11, 2012

Don is currently in Japan to present a lecture and symposium for the Japanese Transpersonal Association meeting at Kyoto Bunkyo University. He will also visit Kyoto University to meet with faculty and present at lecture at Kansai University.

There are some very specific
things that come up in trying to express why my experiences in Japan and with
Japanese people over the years have been so meaningful in my life. One are devices for listening to the earth,
literally. You see them everywhere­–in
gardens, shrines, temples, ordinary backyards:
2-inch diameter bamboo pipes sticking up from the ground, some sunk very
deep into stream beds or hollows, others not so far under the surface. People are always stopping to bend over and
listen. The sounds vary from the
dramatic and contrapuntal to simple whispers.

Another is the commonplace
practice of honoring roots of large trees.
Because Japan is a country of slopes everywhere with little land that is
level, the roots of large trees are often exposed. And you see people paying attention to these
roots. Near where I am staying there is
a ridge covered with rare old-growth sequoias.
The summit is a web of very large exposed roots, and is a shrine, marked
by flags and various ritual objects. People walk among them bowing and touching
their intricate surfaces.

A recipe for sanity: listening to the earth, and paying homage to
the roots of old growth, expressing gratitude for the wonders we are given.

October 09, 2012

Don is currently in Japan to present a lecture and symposium for the Japanese Transpersonal Association meeting at Kyoto Bunkyo University. He will also visit Kyoto University to meet with faculty and present at lecture at Kansai University.

I am sitting in my inn, an ancient building in a park surrounded by temples and monasteries in the ring of hills that encloses the city. As always, I come here to this ancient seat of wisdom wondering what on earth I, of an adolescent culture, child of rough-and-tumble gold rush immigrants to Calfornia, have to offer people growing up saturated by wise practices and thoughts, gardens and trees sculpted to carry one's eyes out on into the far skies, the constant sounds of deep monastic bells, thousands of texts about what it means to sit, walk, breathe?

So I respond almost automatically by going into a deeper sense of inquiry than usual. For instance, I did a four-hour workshop yesterday at Kyoto Bunkyo University for about 50 members of the Japanese Transpersonal Association, about 30 of whom were grad students; the rest clinicians. The somewhat daunting topic I was assigned was The Body and Sprituality. Not being so foolish as to propose any sort of answers, I settled on four specific inquiries.

One was what happens to our consciousness when we settle more sensitively into the outside environment, cultivating our body' capacities for opening to sounds, colors, space, textures, light. For this particular hour, I asked people to gather in a garden in a quiet corner of the campus. Unlike the transcendental gardens of Kyoto where the placement of stones, bridges, carp, shaping of trees and course of the paths carry the visitor far beyond the distant hills out into the ozones, this one was somewhat dried out, murky ponds, somewhat feeble trees, sparse grasses, sounds of traffic. All the same, it was still a tranquil and living place on an otherwise sterile modern campus with few signs of natural growth.

October 05, 2012

Do you want to know what is in your food? Or do you blindly trust any food manufacturer or processor to simply deliver the goods, without disclosure of contents, without reference to how it was grown, produced or processed?

Californians will let the government know soon enough how they feel on the issue. A landmark decision will be made by California voters in this November election on proposed statute Proposition 37.

Do you want to know what is in your food?

This statewide initiative would require all food distributors, retailers and manufacturers to add labeling that would identify ingredients from genetically modified sources—the so-called "GMO foods." It's a serious law with real "teeth" that would impact the entire sequence of farm-to-table stakeholders, but most of all, could mean a new era in accountability from Big Food.

For decades, Big Food manufacturers have put pressure on FDA and federal and state legislators to resist any attempts to label foodstuffs out of fear that if consumers knew they were eating genetically-modified ingredients, they may choose something else. Yes, it's likely they would. It's called a basic instinct for health and survival.

Just 10 days ago a damning report was released that presents documentation that advisors at the FDA have known about the deleterious health affects from genetically modified foods for some time, and yet, have done nothing but protect marketers and manufacturers.

This partnership was founded on the principles of reciprocal
learning, client empowerment, social justice, and the building of long-term
sustainable relationships. This fall we are beginning our third year of work
with the Family, Youth, and Childcare Center in
the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. More than 20 students and alumni have been
involved with facilitating arts-based staff retreats, running
pre-practicum EXA groups for children grades 3-5, acting as aesthetic
witnesses, counseling teens, running a dance group for moms, and completing
practicum hours, among other things. We are now about to deepen our work with Glide by partnering
with Glide Women’s Center, where one of our treasured alums, Khara Scott Bey, currently works.

To help fund our partnership, EXA and Glide will co-host “An Evening of
Social Revelry, Silent Auction, and Performances” on Saturday, Sept. 29, in Namaste Hall in the CIIS Main Building. We strongly encourage the CIIS community to
attend. This will be a great opportunity to socialize and network with some
great people, as well as bid on a wide variety of items (from artwork to healing
sessions to a weekend in Napa!). You'll also witness some truly special performances
from our alumni and the children of Glide’s Family, Youth, and Childcare
Center.

August 14, 2012

In 1978 in London, I had a tan mid-length suede coat, chocolate brown Frye boots, a large leather handbag and daily practice of poetry. I lived in Highbury in North Islington in a basement flat with a small twin bed, a weak shower, and darkness all times of day. I often walked from Euston station to the Reading Room of the British Library on Great Russell Street, rather than take the Tube to Tottenham Court Road, so I could stroll Bloomsbury. Walking Virginia Woolf’s neighborhood was an experience of art for me.

British Museum Reading Room

I carried my notebook everywhere and wormed my way into a mentorship with Elliott Coleman, who’d founded and then directed the Writing Seminars at John Hopkins. Retired, a bit lost, afraid of death after a recent stroke, Elliott shared stories of writers and writing and lessons about visual art, Proust, opera, BBC radio, and the newly installed Pope—John Paul II. Elliott showed me art practice meant paying attention to every detail in the physical landscape and mind’s eye—and absorbing oneself in art.

In London, art was everywhere I was—at the market stalls in Covent Garden or Notting Hill Gate, in Foyles, the ICA, RADA (so many museums, bookstores, galleries!), the West End and Fringe theaters, the rock and classical musicians in the Tube stations, the jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, and part of the pub lunches and take-out dinners I had with artists in my creative writing program.

I immersed myself in art, absorbing it through my skin into my bloodstream—so it could travel through my heart.

Art was in what I read, saw, experienced, touched, related to—every art and all arts were a teacher to me. I didn’t focus on a skill or develop a technique. I took in everything. I learned specifically and generally, within a genre and discipline, and beyond discipline, across discipline and in relationship to everything.

CIIS was mentioned as already teaching from a "similar perspective" (the reference to the Institute of Transpersonal Studies was actually an error—the reference should have been to ITP, now known as Sofia University); but CIIS has pioneered in the integration of psychology and spirituality for over 40 years; no university has been doing it longer or more comprehensively.

I appreciated the distinction made by Julie Exline, president of the APA's Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, who pointed out that Columbia's (and CIIS') approach to psychology and spirituality is very different from that offered by faith-based schools, and it is rare in academia.

The most wide-ranging approach to the integration of psychology and spirituality at CIIS is actually in the School of Consciousness and Transformation, particularly in East-West Psychology, because there are limits to how much spirituality can be formally incorporated into the curriculum of license-eligible clinical degrees. In our clinical programs the spiritual component is typically, and notably, embodied in the teachers (and students). Still, I believe it is possible to make spirituality even more explicit in our clinical training programs (as we are doing in the Mindfulness and Compassion in Psychotherapy certificate offered through CIIS Public Programs & Performances).

Most psychotherapists want to do excellent work with their clients. They take courses to study techniques that enhance their abilities to intervene in effective ways to promote human change and to alleviate the symptoms of suffering. Research studies show that more important to the successful outcome of psychotherapy than any technique is the relationship between the client and the therapist. Clients change when they are motivated and ready.

What can we do to inspire this readiness? Most graduate programs in the field provide abundant information and studies required for state licensure, but, given the time frame of graduate school, can only marginally address the issue of how one creates a relationship that inspires a client to evolve emotionally and psychologically. The Certificate Program in Mindfulness and Compassion in Psychotherapy at CIIS is one of the few programs in the country that addresses this issue. The program features internationally acclaimed speakers and researchers in the use of mindfulness and compassion in the realm of psychotherapy.

Mindfulness has recently become a popular approach that is used in a variety of ways in psychotherapy as well as in meditative practice. It has been researched and shown to be effective on issues as diverse as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, sleep disorders, and even psoriasis. Mindfulness involves attention to the present moment without attachment or judgment. Mindfulness involves welcoming and allowing, rather than resisting one's experience and trying to change it. Using mindfulness in psychotherapy can help the practitioner become more aware of the fine grain of their client’s internal experience as it unfolds moment to moment. It is like shining the spotlight of attention on one's thoughts, feelings, sensations, images, memories, and impulses in order to recognize the subtle details of what is available in the moment. Exponentially more information becomes available to both therapist and client alike by using this approach. It is also effective at transforming one's relationship to one's own experience so that we do not generate additional suffering by becoming adversarial to our own internal worlds. There are many approaches in therapy that use mindfulness. These include: Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Hakomi Mindfulness-Based Experiential Psychotherapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and others. In MCP we include all these approaches so that participants can develop their own portfolio of knowledge about how mindfulness can be used to deepen the therapeutic encounter.

We also focus on the emotional state of the therapist. How does one become a person with whom people want to expose their deepest and most delicate emotional parts? We need to cultivate qualities such as warmth, wonder, deep curiosity, and compassion.